Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USACurriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USALineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

The shapes and architecture of the organs in the animal body develop through complex coordination of cell shape change, cell migration, and cell proliferation. Finegan et al (2019) use the simple model of the Drosophila ovary and elongation of each egg chamber to explore this process. They find that a gradient of myosin‐driven tension exists along the axis of organ elongation and that this orients the division of the constituent cells. This and other recent work highlight how tissue‐level tension plays a key role in regulating tissue architecture.

Each organ in our body has a characteristic size and shape. To achieve this, cell proliferation, cell shape change, and rearrangement must be carefully orchestrated. For example, our limbs start as simple limb buds that undergo complex rearrangements to expand, extend, and differentiate, creating the complex polarized organ allowing us to write this piece. Defining molecular mechanisms of tissue‐level coordination is a key task for our field. One exciting new area is how cells integrate and interpret force generated across the tissue into individual behaviors.

Complex organs include multiple cell types that must act in concert. The Drosophila ovary provides a superb yet simple model. Each oocyte and its associated germline nurse cells are surrounded by a polarized epithelial sheet of somatic follicle cells, forming a mini‐organ, the egg chamber (Fig 1A). As the oocyte grows in size, the follicular epithelium also expands, and it does so asymmetrically, elongating > 2‐fold along the future anterior–posterior …

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